Mapp Engage allows you to personalize your messages based on each contact’s profile, preferences, or behavior. Personalized messages increase the relevance of your communication and help improve engagement and conversion.
There are two personalization approaches in Mapp Engage:
Placeholders – a simple way to insert individual values, such as a contact’s name
Rules – a more advanced option to show or hide content based on conditions
Use a placeholder if the value is always present and safe to display. Use a rule if the value can be missing or if the content depends on contact data, for example to show fallback content. Rules can contain placeholders, so you can combine both in one message.
1 Use Case Comparison
Use Case | With Placeholders | With Rules (Extended) |
|---|---|---|
Personalized greeting | Use the contact’s first name in the message. | Adapt the greeting based on gender and name, with fallback if data is missing. |
Location reference | Insert the city or country from the profile. | Show content only to contacts from specific regions or cities. |
Loyalty status | Mention the contact’s current loyalty level. | Show exclusive benefits only to contacts who meet a certain threshold (e.g. Gold tier). |
2 Personalization Placeholders
Placeholders are used to insert values from user, group, or member attributes directly into a message. They are enclosed in <%...%> and replaced with the actual value during message sendout.
Common examples include:
First name, city, country
Group name or membership level
Loyalty points or preferences
Note
A placeholder for an empty attribute inserts nothing. For a contact without a first name,
Hello <%${user['FirstName']}%>,becomesHello ,. If a value can be missing, use a rule with fallback content instead.
Tools to use:
Personalization expander: Insert placeholders directly during message creation
Code View: Manually enter placeholders when working with custom layouts or external code
Note
Member attributes are not available in the personalization expander. Personalizations based on custom attributes must be configured manually. In these cases, enter the placeholder code manually. See Attribute References.
Learn more: Placeholders for Message, Group, and System Data, Personalization Placeholders
3 Personalization Rules
Rules define whether content is shown or hidden based on logical conditions. This allows you to display or suppress specific parts of a message, depending on each contact’s data or behavior.
Rules are useful when:
You want to create fallback options if certain data is missing
You need to adjust content for different audience segments
You want to combine multiple conditions in one message block
You can also include placeholders inside rules for full flexibility.
A rule consists of one or more InsertIf blocks and optional InsertElse blocks. At send time, Mapp Engage checks the blocks for each contact in the order they are defined and inserts the content of the first block whose condition is met. A default InsertElse block without a condition is used if no other condition applies. Rules only control the content of a message. They do not define the audience, the timing, or the campaign flow.
Combined conditions: A block can contain several conditions. With All, every condition must be true. With One, at least one condition must be true. Grouped conditions allow combinations such as
A AND (B OR C).Rules with or without content: A rule can contain its own content, for example a complete greeting that you reuse as one unit. A rule without content wraps existing content in your message and only controls whether it is shown.
Block names: Block names appear in the email message statistics. Meaningful names make it easier to compare how the variants perform.
Rules in messages: When you insert a rule into a message, its code is copied into the message. Changes you make in the message do not change the saved rule.
Tools to use:
Personalization Builder: Visually create and structure rule logic
Personalization expander: Insert existing rules into your message
Code View: Build custom logic manually (for advanced scenarios)
Learn more: Personalization Rules, Create a Personalization Rule
Looking for a structured learning path?
Learn step by step in our Academy Course: Mapp Engage - Advanced - Personalization Rules.
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4 Data and Functions
Placeholders and rules work with the data in your Engage system. Functions extend rules with checks and calculations.
Attributes: Store contact, group, and member data that you use in placeholders and rules. See Understanding Attributes.
Related Data: Store larger or structured data, such as product catalogs or order histories, and use it in rules and messages. See Getting Started with Related Data in Mapp Engage and Personalization with Related Data.
Functions: Extend rules when a simple value check is not enough. Functions validate values, for example a date or a format, or transform them, for example by extracting or formatting a string. Some functions serve special cases such as coupons or related data. Functions often require Code View. See Mapp Engage Functions.
5 Next Steps
To see the steps from creating a message to reviewing its performance in order, see Getting Started with Personalization in Mapp Engage.